


Propriety

by thedevilchicken



Category: Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
Genre: Angst, Desire, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-16 21:19:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13062354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: Ashley has always tried to be a good man.





	Propriety

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bonibaru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonibaru/gifts).



Ashley has always tried to be a good man. 

He was brought up that way, in a very fine tradition passed down to him through generations of whose name and of whose honor he has tried to make himself be worthy. He thinks - he _believes_ \- that had war not ridden roughshod through their genteel corner of the world, he would have found success in that pursuit. He would have married his cousin Melanie and steered Twelve Oaks onwards into a prosperous future. Se would have been the sort of man his father could have been proud to call his son. He would have been upstanding. He would have been good. 

On the good days, he knows that's true with clear and steady certainty. On the bad ones, what he knows is something very different; the war is just the excuse he uses, an ugly fact that covers over something uglier beneath. The truth is, Ashley has never been very good at all, though Scarlett has never known it any more than Melanie. Ashley is not good, and the only one who knows is Captain Butler. 

Rhett Butler is a cad, and a self-confessed one when it comes to it. He is so bold and brazen and stands so utterly in opposition to every virtue that Ashley's mind could conjure that he ought to hate the sight of him; he ought to quietly wish him gone, from beneath his good Southern manners. Rhett has a reputation that, in this new world that Ashley doesn't understand, his charm can make up for nearly as readily as his money does. Tonight, at Scarlett's dinner table, Ashley can hardly bear to look at him. He is something that Ashley knows he cannot be himself; he is an honest man. 

It's late by the time they've drunk Charles's whisky and smoked his good cigars and said goodnight to their hostess, whose gaze lingerson him as it always does. Melanie joined them for an hour or two before she retired, early as usual, and when Rhett's buggy pulls up to the front of the Kennedys' home and the servant leaves it there for him to take, Ashley knows his wife's evening ended hours ago while Rhett's is just beginning. 

"Are you going to ask me where I'm going?" Rhett says, looking down from his seat, one arm leaning on the buggy's frame in the warm summer night's air. 

"I don't think I need to ask," Ashley replies, and Rhett laughs out loud, raucously, and the few people walking in the street turn around to look. Ashley wonders what it must be like to experience every part of life as richly as Rhett so obviously does. He wishes he could do that, too, and then again he hopes he never does. 

"No, I don't suppose you do," Rhett replies. He raises his brows. "Would you care to join me?"

Ashley smiles wryly, in lieu of further response. Rhett's own smile broadens. 

"No, I don't suppose you would," Rhett says. "Not even now." 

Ashley has always tried to be a good man, even if the kind of pure, Christian goodness that he sees residing there in Melanie has never been his nature. Melanie would make a brief, polite refusal and extricate herself from the situation, her conduct beyond reproach just as anyone should hope for; more than that, she wouldn't consider the offer for a single instant. Ashley, on the other hand, has no deeper wish than to go with him. Melanie is good. Rhett is honest. Ashley is neither one nor the other. 

Their first meeting was not the barbecue at Twelve Oaks; it was in Charleston, before Rhett's scandalous behavior estranged him from his family. That same honesty was in him even then and Ashley can recall how he felt himself burning up with shame there in the presence of it, in the face of the lies he told himself. They drank in the same fashionable salons and crossed paths at parties in the same good society homes and Rhett caught Ashley's eye with his languid smiles and his cutting wit and easy charm. He recalls retiring at night with unsettling thoughts that lingered after the lights were out. He recalls Rhett's unambiguous invitations and his own strained, surprised, polite refusals. He recalls wanting to say yes but knowing he must say no. 

And then, there he was at Twelve Oaks. Rhett hadn't changed, not in a single particular, and Ashley envied that though he knows envy is a sin and not a virtue. That afternoon with Scarlett, in the library, he didn't feel greatly virtuous; he could see all the things in Katie Scarlett O'Hara that he'd once seen in Rhett Butler. And afterwards, smoking, talking with the other men, there was Rhett again, though he stood apart on account of his reputation. Ashley looked at him across the room and Rhett looked back. 

Ashley tries to be good, but sometimes he fails. He asked Rhett to be their guest that night and he understood, when Rhett accepted, that room and board was not the extent of what he'd offered; the heat in his cheeks said so, and the heat in Rhett's eyes confirmed it. 

When Rhett Butler came to his room that night, turned the handle and let himself inside, he should have turned him away but he didn't. When Rhett pressed his mouth to his in the lamplight, he should have been disgusted by it. When Rhett tore roughly at his shirt, he should have been angered by it. When Rhett undressed him, when Rhett's hot, bare skin was pressed to his, when Rhett's teeth were at his neck, Rhett's fingers in his hair, when Rhett pushed him down against the bed, it should have felt like the very gravest mistake that he'd made in his life. It didn't. Sometimes, he believes the true mistake is every time he's said no to it after. 

"No, I don't suppose you would," Rhett says. "Not even now." And Ashley smiles, wryly, tightly. He's thinking of a room in a house he can never go back to, what he's told himself was a youthful transgression but the memory of it never dims. He's thinking of a room in a house he's never been to, the sweat of bare skin on skin in the summer night's heat, Rhett's sharp tongue and hard mouth, gasping, straining, _more_. He's thinking perhaps he loves Scarlett and he wishes he loved Melanie, but he desires Rhett.

"Melanie will wonder where I am," he replies, blandly, because it's what's required. 

Rhett leans closer, fleetingly. "Would you go with her, if she asked instead of me?" he asks.

He doesn't mean Melanie. Ashley does not misunderstand. He knows the misunderstanding in this moment is all Rhett's. 

"No," he says, and he says it calmly though he's turbulent beneath it and perhaps that shows, between the cracks that have been forming since before the war. "No, Captain, I wouldn't." 

Rhett looks at him. Rhett looks closely at him and, for once, before he snaps the reins and rides away, Ashley thinks Rhett understands. 

Ashley has always tried to be a good man, to follow his upbringing and to maintain his honor in all things. He has tried to be a good man in spite of all the things he wants. He gave in once, a long time ago; he must never again, or he fears he won't return from it. 

Ashley has always tried to be a good man. But, as he watches Rhett leave, he knows he will always remember the night when he wasn't.


End file.
